Monday, September 23, 2013

What the F is an EFF-bot?

I have to say that I think there have been several Twitterbots created just for me. Such as the @effbot or the @Swear_Bot and let is not forget the cute and lovable #twensored duck.

I could swear the effbot was so hot on my trail, that within 15 minutes of sneaking in a different hashtag to outsmart the effbot; it added that code as well (#EFF) and started hijacking those tweets as well.

Yes, I do believe I am being followed by a bot. Does that make me grandiose or paranoid?

So much so, that I in a couple of friends to test the Bot – to see just how much human supervision a Bot needs in order to function and evolve.

We learned very quickly that the effbot had somehow singled me out. I wrote the effbot a letter and asked him to give me the “F” word back, but the effbot did not reply.

I took it upon myself to say #EFF the #EFF'n effbot!

I don't know when the effbot was created (of course I am writing while the Twitter is down so I have no way of checking) but about three weeks ago I woke to find a whole bunch of tweets with the hashtag #EFF.

At first I assumed that it was just a polite way of sneaking in the word "fuck" into a tweet. So I used it everywhere. I would say #EFF you, or #EFF that. And before long people started asking what the #EFF does #EFF mean?

I got replies listing everything from “Early Follow Friday” to the “Electronic Foundation Frontier” So I spent about 48-72 hours trying to figure out what the #EFF is #EFF.

All this for an eff’n Bot?

You see at first the effbot only picked up tweets that used "eff" in sequence. For example, "I am so eff'n late for work" or, "Twitter really needs to fix the eff'n problem with @replies."

So my initial response was to hit retweet and I typed into my mini QWERTY keys on the TwackBerry and wrote, #EFF=FUCK.

Well this confused some people why was I saying the f-word in response to an innocent tweet. Well I don't remember anything about that tweet except that someone had asked "what is #EFF?"

Well of course, being barely awake and reading the miniature font on the screen of my BlackBerry, I was eager to jump in to the conversation and screen there some confusion over the meaning of what I now know to be a is called a hashtag) of the "hashtag" #EFF.

Realizing that people were confused that I was assigning a "superlative" to a hashtag, I decided to go on a mission to uncover the significance of #EFF.

So I took it a step further, and responded with some = from the Spanish Inquisition: Forbidden Use of Carnal Knowledge.

Alternatively, from England where one (well, I suppose two) people had to get permission to engage in sexual relations; warranting a notice that read, "Fornication Under Consent of the King."

So I woke up one morning and saw one of my favorite twitterbuds latest tweet #EFF. Now bear in mind that I was brand new to twitter, had never heard the word hashtag and was determined to figure out what the damn EFFbot was.

Turns out it was used by one of two groups of people: pussies who are too PC to use the F word and those who support internet freedom and the Electronic Freedom Foundation or eff.org

It took me a while to figure it out, but I'll never forget the flood of eff'n tweets that got me through one of the darkest times of my entire life.